The Twos
In my own experience, our contemporary and conventional notions of sex, romance, and relationships are so intertwined with each other that we cannot seem to discern where one ends and the other begins. On the one hand, our modern capitalist and heteropatriarchal society tells us that if you love someone, you obviously ought to have conventional penetrative sex with them in a relationship emulating Western ideals: Otherwise, your “relationship” isn’t real. On the other hand, our puritanical Christian-informed conservative culture tells us that sex is reserved exclusively for the heteronormative marriage bed, and love is simply its lead-in; both are in service strictly to white supremacist obligations to generate children to serve as future culture warriors (or workers in service to the wealthy). For a lot of people, both inside and outside of the queer community, love is equal to sex. To be attracted to someone and want a deep, intimate relationship with them is the same as wanting to have sex with them. Sexual attraction and sexual activity is what defines queerness.
The lived experienced of asexuals and aromantics display a diversity of connections to others that does not reflect such a one-dimensional view of relationships and attraction. Which brings us to two in the Minor Arcana. Two is a number of duality: Of one, and the other. For many aces and aros, this has manifested in a concept that comes up often in online ace and aro discourse: The Split Attraction Model.
The Split Attraction Model, in its current nutshell, posits that it is possible for people to experience attraction to others in such a way that sexual attraction — how they might experience the drive to be sexually active with someone — is decoupled from romantic attraction — how they might experience romantic love towards someone. To use myself as an example, I’ve felt romantic attraction to people who have both identified as male and as female, but my sexual attraction has acted in a demisexual manner.
While thematically this idea goes back to the late 1800s, there is also controversy surrounding the origins of what “The Split Attraction Model” has been taken to mean today. The argument over what it means to use a certain term in the ace and aro community is one that I don’t have the inclination to wade into; those waters are deceptively deep, and one can find oneself easily overwhelmed in debates over the value of policing language and identity. But what I do want to say is that for better or for worse, the Split Attraction Model is a mental framework for comprehending patterns of attraction that many — both inside and outside of the ace and aro community — have found useful in understanding their emotions and relationships. Like microlabels, the SAM as it is used today is far from perfect, and it is entirely possible for people to see it not as a gateway to a more expansive view of love and sexuality, but as a restrictive, prescriptive pigeonhole. But it is an important starting point for many people to understand that love and sex need not be one and the same. For ace, aro, and indeed queer people as a whole, it is entirely valid to experience and conceptualize love and sexual attraction as two different forces that don’t have to run parallel to each other. One’s own experience of love doesn’t have to follow or be linked to one’s own experience of sexual attraction.
The twos in the Smith-Waite tarot speak to this experience. The Two of Cups can represent how one’s differing experience of romantic vs. sexual attraction can be harmonized through an understanding that while these two forces can act orthogonally, they in no way oppose or invalidate each other. The coming together of the figure on the left with the figure on the right illustrates not just an act of uniting, but a new way of seeing a relationship between how we think of and experience romance, and how we think of and experience sexual attraction.
The Two of Wands is usually seen as a prelude to a journey; the world outside our borders beckons us to explore new and exciting possibilities. Here, it invites us to go beyond the traditional normative narrative of sex = love to a place outside of our comfort zone, where love can exist in a realm outside of traditional sexual ideals, where our asexuality and aromanticism can both be explored and expressed without shame. What would such a journey look like for you? It could be something as far ranging as an exploration of polyamory, or queer platonic partnerships, and it may be as closer to home as starting a conversation with other asexuals in your life, or writing about your own asexual or aromantic path.
There is no illusion, however, as to how difficult it can be for us to disentangle our experiences and expectations of attraction. The Two of Swords reflects how difficult it can be for us to think of love and sex as two potentially separate entities especially in the face of amatonormative patterns of thinking, but it can also speak to how it is very possible for us hold our ideas of sex and our ideas of love in two different places. While the blindfolded person may at first seem to be in a precarious position, the moon (linking us back to The Moon and The High Priestess) and the stilled waters behind them suggest that there is a deeper sense of calm and inner knowledge that has been accessed. We may be struggling to make sense of our patterns of attraction to others, or even feel overwhelmed with our second-guesses and racing thoughts over people in our lives, but in those times we are invited to go back to our intuition, our inner knowledge inherent to our asexual and aromantic bodies, and what they are telling us to be true.
The Two of Pentacles can be seen as a card speaking to the need for adaptability and flexibility in our self-understanding. We have our ups and downs. We have our periods of self-assured safety, and our periods of shaky uncertainty. Some days we may be rock solid in how we see and understand our sexual and romantic attractions to the people in our lives. Other days, we might meet a new person, and experience a roiling flood of emotions that might make us doubt our core understanding of who we are. Fluidity is an aspect of the ace and aro experience that we invited to be mindful of in this space. There is an unfathomable amount of room in which we are free to evolve and shift in our understanding of our asexual and aromantic selves; this is no better seen than in our language, which has itself changed and evolved from rigid definitions of “asexual” vs. “allosexual”.
I’ve reflected a great deal on the question of what advice I would give to people who are just starting out their asexual journey. Above all other words I would say this: Give yourself room to change. Give yourself space to shift and grow in your understanding of who you are in asexuality and aromanticism, whether it may transition you into a new microlabel on the asexual or aromantic spectrum, or even outside of asexuality or aromanticism entirely. Recognizing and accepting the potential fluidity of our asexuality opens the door to a healthier exploration of our identity.
The number two also brings us back to the one of the central themes of the tarot: balance. Here, in these cards, we see the expression of balance in all of its forms and aspects.
Bringing us back to the number two in the Major Arcana, The High Priestess in the Smith-Waite tarot features two very prominent pillars, one labelled “B” and one labelled “J”; the B pillar is commonly interpreted as standing for Boaz (“In it is strength”), and J standing for Jachim (“He will establish”). A reference to 1 Kings 7:21 from the Old Testament, they are described as being the entrance pillars of the Temple of Solomon, symbolizing mystical knowledge. But their black and white colour often symbolize the duality of beginnings and endings, of light and dark, and of feminine and masculine (among many other binaries and dualities). Indeed, the High Priestess itself can be taken to symbolize the balancing of logic and reason with intuition and inner knowledge.
Circling around to the Minor Arcana, we can see these themes coming up in the Twos of the four suits as well. The Two of Wands shows the person contemplating a journey out into the wider world; one is secured firmly to the battlement of their stone house (which really looks more like a castle), while the other is held in their hand, unsecured, but still held firm. There’s a clear tension between this person’s desire to travel outward into the wider world, and their desire for security and stability. That tension is further mirrored in the cluster of flowers at the bottom right; the white purity of the lilies (freedom from hunger and want) versus the red passionate hunger of the roses. This is commonly understood to directly symbolize an actual journey or trip, but it can also symbolize a metaphorical journey as well: It could talk about someone’s journey of inner discovery and exploration of their asexuality or aromanticism, as well as their own gender. It could also talk about a journey into further developing a personal or professional connection with someone, or a new relationship or career opportunity. In all of these cases, the Two of Wands tells us to carefully balance what one part of our selves is telling us to do (to stay in our position of safety and security) with what another part is urging us to do (to get out of our comfort zone and really do some exploring).
Carrying on this theme is the Two of Swords, whose feminine figure, blindfolded and seated is somewhat evocative of High Priestess. Here, we are in a position of carefully balancing two sides to a choice. We cannot carry the weight of the opposing swords forever: One of them will have to be dropped, or put down, as this balancing act is an unsustainable situation. So which one will you put down, and why? The waters behind this person remind us that we also need to listen to our inner knowledge, our unconscious selves, and intuition when making our decision. Cold hard rationality won’t be enough. As an example of such a situation, perhaps we are considering coming out as asexual, aromantic or aspec to a trusted friend, partner or family member. Is this really the right thing to do? Are they the right person, and would this be the right time? Perhaps it is time to trust our gut feeling about this person and the situation. Perhaps it would also do us well to weigh past comments they’ve made in conversation with others to be sure, too.
Further continuing and developing this further is the Two of Pentacles, the person forever locked in the topsy-turvy balancing act between left and right. Since the Pentacles are more commonly the domain of the physical realm, I reflexively take this to talk about the seemingly universal balancing act we all face of maintaining a healthy balance between our professional and personal lives. In the age of the pandemic and working from home, this balance has now more than ever leapt to the forefront of many more people’s consciousness. But I’ve come to more often now associate this with the balance of how we manage our two very important resources. These two resources may not be in and of themselves things we can see or touch or feel in a material sense, but they nevertheless have a huge effect on how we conduct ourselves and move about in the physical world: our time and our energy. For ace and aro people in relationships, this can easily take the form of cautioning us to be mindful of balancing our non-romantic relationships with our partners. As people who exist in opposition to amatonormative ideals of relationships, this could also mean us remembering that our platonic partnerships and friendships can be just as impactful and as powerful as romantic or sexual relationships, whether they are the relationships we may already have, or the relationships that others are pushing us to start.
The seemingly oddball card in this set is the Two of Cups, a card that to me almost comes across as being more toned-down, subdued version of The Lovers. Much like The Lovers, this card is often interpreted through a very traditionally amatonormative and cis-gendered/heteronormative lens — more often than not, this card is still strongly associated with conventionally normative partnered sexual relationships — and because of that, this card is often one that begs to be reclaimed from it’s usual interpretations.
One one level, the coming together of these two people appear to me as a symbol of self-love and self-acceptance; a coming together not necessarily of two partners, but two disparate halves of a separated whole. Again, we can think in slightly Jungian terms and imagine these two people to be what are often seen as the masculine versus feminine aspects of the self, or the unconscious versus the conscious self. Whatever or who ever these two sides are, they have elected to set aside whatever differences set them apart; the fact that they are depicted as coming together from a distance suggests that this is more than an act of two sides coming together. This is in fact a reuniting of two sides that have grown or drifted apart. This can have many implications and meanings for ace people; to my mind, examples could include a daily act of both acceptance and recognition of one’s asexual nature, a regular affirmation of one’s aromantic feelings, or even a similar recognition of multigender attraction. It could also mean the simple act of loving oneself and showing oneself grace and kindness today, or even a willingness to be open again to someone who may have been closed or hostile to even just the concepts of being aromantic or asexual. Either way, it is the achievement of balance and harmony, out of an imbalance and disharmony. It starts with us asking ourselves how imbalanced we are in ourselves, and how imbalanced we are in our relationships. More often than not, these two sources of imbalance are tightly intertwined.
The Two of Cups invites people to achieving balance both in themselves and with others, with the clear reminder that achieving this relational balance in no way shape or form has to involve sex or a conventionally partnered relationship; it invites ace people to explore the balance with close friends, queer platonic partners, or family. But it also reminds us that one of those balances has to be within ourselves too.
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